If someone prefers videos, based on their past behavior on Facebook, videos that you post will get a higher score.

Factor #3 – The interactions from other users who saw the post: When you post something new on your page, Facebook shows it to a small group of people (maybe 25-100).

Then, if those users like the post (overall), it will give your post a higher score and show it to more of your audience.

Many businesses complain about having a poor reach while posting boring things. So even though they reach a small initial following, it never goes any farther because of this factor.

This feature can actually be really good for you.

If you see that certain types of posts or topics get a wide reach, you can post more of them.

Factor #4 – Any complaints or negative feedback: This ties into factor #3. When Facebook shows a user a post, the user always has the option to report the post (for inappropriate content) or say that they don’t want to see it.

For that particular user, Facebook will remember that in the future. They likely won’t see much more from your page.

In addition, if a new post gets a significant amount of overall negative feedback, its score is going to be lowered, and its reach will be low.

Factor #5 – When it was posted: Finally, this simple factor comes from the “time decay” component of the algorithm.

When a post is brand new, it’s likely going to be the most interesting that it’s ever going to be. Over time, the score of a post goes down as it gets older.

There’s no way to manipulate this factor; just be aware of it.

1. The best time to post probably isn’t what you thought…

Picking the right time to post on your page isn’t going to take your reach from low to high, but it can boost your reach by a few percent in some cases.

2. Followers love one type of content in particular

Yes, there are a few rules to using transparency effectively, but overall, showing your audience what’s going on behind the scenes is incredibly useful.

It’s more interesting and often more educating than regular content, which is why transparency is powerful.

But how can you be transparent on Facebook to increase your organic reach?

Here’s the general plan:

post something personal, real, and interesting (transparent)

get more likes, comments, shares (engagement) than usual

that specific post will have a large reach

that score will contribute to the scores of future posts, giving future content a larger reach than normal

This is why you should be regularly sharing transparent content since it has the most reach by far.

Buffer shared a great data-driven case study on this. They shared several pictures over the course of a few weeks from a trip to South Africa:

This is definitely transparent content. They’re sharing with their followers something personal about the people behind their business.

But it’s not even about social media—their main topic!

So, did this content have a good reach?

You bet. Buffer shared their results over that two-week period. As you can see, five of their top seven posts (in terms of reach) were about their trip (marked in orange):

This data shows you that reach is not always just about clicks and other forms of engagement although they are big factors. The second best performing post, for example, had a fraction of the clicks of the best post.

Transparent posts tend to perform better on all those other factors that determine your post’s overall score.

Example #2 – Don’t be afraid to show your face: Your followers want to know who the people behind your brand are.

The days of hiding behind a business name are gone as information about people behind companies can be sourced from a simple Google search.

But instead of making your followers hunt you down, give them what they’re looking for. It helps to build trust and relationships.

The best marketers today know this.

They share photos and videos that feature them so that followers can really connect with them.

A great example is Marie Forleo, who often shares videos on her page:

No surprise, these posts get hundreds of likes and shares and tons of comments.

Example #3 – Go behind the scenes at an event: Another way transparent content can be useful is if it reveals something exclusive.

Followers value unique content above all else, so when you reveal your personal processes or results of experiments, you give them something that no one can offer (because it’s specific to you).

I saw an example of this recently on the Marketing Profs Facebook page. They shared several pictures of their marketing manager at a rather large event—the B2B marketing forum.

As you can see, it got 11 likes.

And while that’s not particularly impressive, it is when you consider that the page usually gets 2-3 likes on a post.

As I mentioned earlier, improving the organic reach of individual posts on a regular basis (through transparency) can lead to long-term results. The key is being consistent with posting transparent content.

3. Use these 3 ways to encourage more interaction on your posts

Several factors that determine the reach of your posts are based on engagement.

To Facebook, if people like a post, they will interact with it in some way, whether that’s a “like,” share, or comment (or link click if an option).

It follows that if you increase the amount of engagement you get on your posts, you’ll increase your reach.

Ideally, you want to increase engagement on all posts, but even if it’s just every other post, it will still have a large overall effect on your organic reach.

There are three fairly easy ways to instantly start getting more interaction on posts.

Way #1 – Ask questions: One of the main reasons why people don’t contribute themselves, whether it’s on Facebook, your blog, or any other site, is because they don’t think their voices matter.

There’s a disconnect between what you think and what a huge portion of your fans think.

You love when you get comments and questions. It gives you a chance to interact with your followers on a more personal level and provide more value.

But the average follower thinks that you are some guru behind a business who doesn’t care about them.

According to numbers published by Buffer, questions always reach an above average portion of their audience:

The key is to ask the right kinds of questions.

Don’t ask a general question like:

What’s the best social media tool?

It doesn’t work well because it addresses a crowd in general.

Additionally, it’s hard to answer. Who really knows what the best tool is? No one wants to look wrong on social media.

Instead, focus the question on something personal that only each user can answer. For example:

What’s your favorite social media tool?

Here, you’re asking for a personal opinion. Opinions can’t be wrong, so people are more likely to comment.

Also, you’re asking a personal question. Always include the words “you” or “your.” You want your readers to know that you care about what they think.

Bonus tip: Do this in any content even if it’s not on social media. I’ve written “you” or “your” over 100 times so far in this post.

Way #2 – Respond to comments: There’s something I often see that drives me absolutely nuts…

A business or marketer goes to all the trouble of creating good content and building a following on social media.

After a lot of consistent hard work, they start to get a comment on their posts here and there.

And then?

They don’t even bother to respond to the comment.

That commenter was probably one of your most loyal fans just trying to connect with you. By not replying, you’re basically telling them that they’re not worth your time.

They won’t be commenting again in most cases.

Not only that, but if other users see that you don’t respond to comments, why would they bother spending time and energy to leave one?

You can’t wait until you start getting several comments to start interacting.

Take any chance you get, and do your best to reply to every single comment:

I get it, you’re busy. But so am I, and I find the time to reply to hundreds of comments a day.

They may not all be lengthy, in-depth responses, but they’re something to show that I care about those who read my content and try to contribute.

Bonus tip: Try to tag people in your comments, which will give them a notification. They will be more likely to come back and continue the conversation.

Way #3 – Fill in the _____ (blank): Don’t be afraid to get creative with your posts to encourage engagement.

Instead of just asking questions, ask people to fill in the blank, for example.

For instance, you could post:

This Christmas, I want to get _______

Holiday-themed fill-in-the-blanks posts often perform best because there are a lot of emotions associated with holidays.

4. Organic post targeting can take your engagement to a new level

I understand that it’s frustrating to see your organic reach dropping.

It’s easy to say “screw Facebook” and move on.

However, I think that’s a waste of a great opportunity, at least for now.

And while the changes may have hurt some businesses, Facebook has also released a few tools that can help you combat the negative results.

The most important of which is organic post targeting.

What organic post targeting allows you to do is choose to what part of your audience you want to show your post.

This is incredibly useful, especially if you have a fairly large audience.

Here’s why:

When you can target a post to the most interested segment of your followers, it will naturally get a higher engagement reach. This leads to a higher overall organic reach immediately—and later, for future posts.

You target audiences when you run paid advertising because you don’t want to show offers to people who aren’t interested in them.

It’s a similar thing here.

If I’m promoting a post on the topic of social media, not everyone in my audience might care. But those who have demonstrated an interest in social media in some way (on Facebook) likely will.

The bigger your audience, the more it’s divided.

How to do it: Organic post targeting is really easy to do although it’ll take a bit of practice to figure out which targeting settings work best.

Start by going into your general page settings, and check the box to allow “targeting and privacy for posts.”

Now, when you go to post something on your page, you’ll see a little target icon on the bottom row of icons:

Click it, and it will let you pick from several different targeting options.

Depending on your pick, it should bring up a pop-up where you can enter your preferences:

Notice that as you add more targeting preferences, the “Targeted to” number changes.

Be careful not to target too obscure of an audience, or not enough people will see it. Keep your target audience as large as possible, as long as it’s composed of people you think will be highly interested in your post.